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First Love’ finishes the album with Bob Stroger on vocals (and Mr. Margolin taking
over on bass). This is a solid album of well-played Chicago blues with excellent harp

from Bob throughout, however I would have liked to have heard a few acoustic tracks
for variety – like on his recent collaboration with Valerie June.

Graham Harrison

HeavyDrunk Watermelon Slim—Bluesland

Theme Park—4142 Music

HeavyDrunk (Rob Robinson) and Watermelon Slim

(William Homans III)’s idea of a ‘Bluesland Theme
Park’ (“free malt liquor for the kids”) could just
about work (but maybe not the free liquor!) and

Rob’s title track is a great up-tempo way to start the
album with its circus-style brass and frantic vocals.
HeavyDrunk and Slim handle all the vocals and gui-

tars (along with Kurt Stowe), with Kevin McKendree
and Eric Bikales (keyboards), John Allouise or Brian Allen (bass), Ricky Burkhead

(percussion), with Etta Britt, Tabitha Fair and Maggie Richardson on backing vocals.
‘New Wine’ is a mid-tempo funk fest with Rob on vocals and we get nice slide guitar
alternating with the brass, we also get two versions of the country-tinged ‘Little
Bighorn’ with Slim singing – a slimmed-down band version with his prominent dobro

and an “acoustic” version which just appears to be Slim and his guitar. ‘Church Bells
(Little Zion)’ is another funky blues with electric slide guitar, Hammond organ and

wonderful brass interjections – the horns are Roy Agee (trombone), Emmanuel Ech-
ern and Lorenzo Molina (trumpet) and Evan Cobb and Maxwell Abrams (sax).

Rob wrote the Caribbean-flavoured ‘Watermelon Girl’ with Tony Joe White and it

features pedal steel from Scotty Sanders and Slim’s ‘Road Food and Cheap Motels’ is
another country song, while ‘You Make Me Want To’ is a reflective soul ballad. Rob’s

‘Better Worser Too’ is a dark brooding blues with slide guitar, Hammond and more
lush brass, Slim’s ‘Australia’ is a weird unaccompanied field holler in praise of the
southern continent with just Slim’s harmonica and we check out with Rob’s ‘Fresh’ a

funky soul dancer with blasting brass and backing vocals. I really liked this album
which is full of variety with both men having distinctive and engaging voices and the
backing is superb throughout. Although I hadn’t heard HeavyDrunk before I’ll defi-

nitely check out his back catalogue now. I’ve actually played in a duo supporting
Watermelon Slim and can personally vouch that he is a real character and a charis-
matic performer and while he is slightly overshadowed on this record, his contribu-

tions do give a nice contrast to HeavyDrunk’s songs.

Graham Harrison